QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator SCARR (Queensland) (15:20): Labor's budget is a tax on ambition, a tax on aspiration and a tax on success. That's the reality. It's gone down like a lead balloon in the Australian community across all demographics, from young people to retirees, and the Labor government is now in damage control.
They're trying to pare back various elements of the increase in capital gains tax, trying to play favourites, and they're just digging a deeper hole. That's the reality. Labor's budget has gone down like a lead balloon in the Australian community.
Senator Hume, in her question to the government, raised the legitimate point that the government say they're going to give carve-outs for startups who use innovation—who are innovative. What business isn't innovative? What business today isn't using innovation to survive and prosper?
As Senator Hume said, from the local cafe—and I want to give a shout-out to my friend Nick, who just sold his cafe in my local area, where he had to struggle every single day to be innovative so that his business prospered, providing employment to people and providing an excellent service—to your local hairdresser, they're innovative. My friend Khalid, my barber, who just got made an Australian citizen last week, is a wonderful man who, with his family, came to this country and built a business.
He now employs eight people and owns the premises in which he conducts the business. He has to be innovative every single day. But Labor's now setting up this false construct that some businesses are innovative and some aren't, picking and choosing between different Australian businesses.
It's not right. As Senator Cash said, it's a question of timing. You might be innovative when you start the business, but what about when you sell it 20 years later?
I want to read to you a quote from a founder of SEEK, a company that was set up in 1997. Five or half a dozen people set up that company. It's now the go-to platform for people looking for jobs.
It may have been innovative in 1997, but what about in 2026, when it's got a market capitalisation north of $4 billion and 3,000 employees, including across Asia? Are they innovative now? They were certainly innovative then.
This is what Mr Paul Bassat—not a politician but one of the founders of SEEK Limited, one of Australia's most successful startup companies—says in relation to the Labor government's changes to capital gains tax: … the government is committing a big own goal that will have a significant impact on a critical sector of the economy. He said: I am in a range of different WhatsApp groups with Australian founders, and the overall mood is one of great disappointment and frustration There is great disappointment and frustration amongst the people who are actually setting up these new businesses and creating wealth, prosperity and employment.
That's what they think. Mr Bassat goes on: We don't want own goals either in the World Cup or in our economy, and the government is committing a big own goal that will have a significant impact on a critical sector of the economy. This is a founder of SEEK, now a very successful multibillion-dollar company.
We don't want the next founders to go to Singapore or Canada to set up their companies; we want them to stay in Australia and create wealth and prosperity for the Australian people. Question agreed to.